IMMUNITY IS IMPUNITY IN THE WHISTLEBLOWER
Lincoln, Nebraska, police officer Kathy Bolkovac (played by Rachel Weisz) decides to take a lucrative offer as a UN peacekeeper in Bosnia (though filmed in Romania) during 1999 and is soon appalled at how women are treated in the country, where nearly half the men have been killed in the war, leaving orphans, widows, and others desperate to eke out an existence in a war-town country. The early part of the film deals with her motivation to accept the assignment, but when the film ends she has been fired for defending women’s rights. Her success in the prosecution of a wife beaten by her husband results in promotion by Madeleine Rees (played by Lynn Redgrave) to head the Gender Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights unit in Bosnia. What she finds in the choppily edited narrative, based on her autobiography published this year, is that young women are being sold as slaves not just by local officials but also by Americans in the UN mission. Yet all UN officials are immune from prosecution, so she has nowhere to turn but to try somehow to liberate women through raids conducted by sympathetic coworkers. But she is interfering with those involved in human trafficking (2.5 million women yearly, according to a title at the end of the film), who are making thousands of dollars, so her frustration grows along with their desire to boot her out of her assignment. Much of the film is devoted to providing evidence of the criminal conspiracy, from photographs to conditions of captivity to brutal treatment. The Whistleblower, directed by Larysa Kondracki, also merits the Political Film Society’s nomination for best film exposé and best film focused on human rights of 2011. MH